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Despite challenging obstacles and international travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, business schools across the country have remained committed to going global. Using this difficult time to innovate and evolve, schools are thinking creatively about what a global business education can look like—and why it's a vital component to the student experience.

International education has managed to stay afloat and even grow in some ways—thanks to an accelerated embrace of creative, technology-driven interactions. From collaborative, cross-country business competitions to traveling entrepreneurship webinars, schools are using this time to expand and enhance the meaning of a global education.

• Through the  MBA and business graduate students from eight universities across four countries tested their skills and knowledge in global business strategies. The competition was a collaboration between the University of Washington Michael G. Foster School of Business, the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business and Florida International University’s Center for International Business Education and Research. It allowed students to network internationally, compete virtually with business students from across the globe, formulate business solutions to support an international company, and more. 
• A Global Passport program at the University of Colorado Boulder's Leeds School of Business provided students with the opportunity to virtually travel the world and glean valuable business knowledge from various industry experts over the span of seven weeks. The program, a partnership between Leeds Global Programs and First-Year Experience (FYE) team, gave students the ability to network and hear from professionals around the world. During these virtual events, business students learned about everything from international startup expansions to the pandemic’s impact on the adventure tourism industry in the Asia-Pacific region.   
• At UCLA Anderson, students in their final year of the Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA) program worked virtually on real-world, international consulting projects through the . The program partners students with high-growth global companies for a cross-cultural, market-entry consulting project. Â鶹ÒùÔº reflecting on their experiences in the program this year remarked on the market research, competitive analysis and presentation skills they gained, as well as the international collaboration and real-life results their work produced.    

Weighing in on the topic of global education and its significance in today’s business world, two directors from Leeds School of Business provided insights from their areas of expertise in Leeds global initiatives and global programs, respectively. 

On the importance of incorporating global education in business schools…

The COVID pandemic has illuminated our interconnectedness in this world—we are all dependent on each other in remarkable ways. Each time we visit a store and see empty shelves, we are witnessing the global supply chain. Every moment we spend in videoconferences, we are reminded of the possibilities to learn from afar and accomplish work with new teams.

‘Global classrooms’ can mean students studying abroad for a period of time, or it can mean incorporating international business case studies that challenge us to untangle both culture and business issues simultaneously. Welcoming international students into our classrooms presents a unique way of infusing global constructs into the material, simply by asking for different perspectives.

All efforts to infuse a global mindset across the curriculum will positively impact students’ abilities to thrive with diverse work teams in what is now a truly interconnected global workplace.

– Leeds Faculty Director for Global Initiatives Cynthia Banks

On what a global education can look like today…

Traveling abroad is an amazing way to gain a global education, but it's not the only way. The pandemic has pushed us to think creatively about how to make a globalized education a mainstay in our students’ educational experience, and it’s helped us realize that it’s actually a lot more feasible than we had anticipated. We look at virtual opportunities now from a completely different lens than we used to. But at the same time, we recognize that no matter what happens, virtual experiences are never going to fully replace the immersive experience that travel encompasses.

In our First-Year Global Experience (FGX), we cover standard, introductory international business concepts, and then we also take a deep-dive into a specific country. We look in-depth at a country’s business practices, culture and more, before actually traveling to that country for a week. It’s an exciting, experiential learning opportunity where we take students on business visits, tour local companies, and see things in that specific country that we've spent all semester learning about.

So we're trying to strike that balance in our education, between offering virtual and real-life global experiences. It's about figuring out how do we piece all of these things together in a way that's going to best serve our students. Because, in today’s globalized society, it’s becoming increasingly critical that students have a global education in order to have a successful business career.

– Director of the Leeds First-Year Experience and Global Programs Andrea Straccia